Customers Foil Brevard Bank Robbery

May 9, 1985|By Stephen Kindland and Lynne Bumpus-Hooper of The Sentinel Staff

MERRITT ISLAND — Three customers, including a karate expert, thwarted a bank robbery Wednesday afternoon when they overpowered the man and held him until Brevard County deputy sheriffs arrived.

Walter Simpson, 28, owner and instructor at the ATA Fitness Center on Merritt Island, put the man in a neck hold and flipped him to the floor as the man walked past him with a bag of money, deputies said.

John Hoag and Philip Biondolillo, customers in the bank, helped Simpson hold the man on the floor until deputies arrived, deputies said. Witnesses said the man's .22-caliber automatic pistol was knocked to the floor in the scuffle.

Witnesses told deputies the man entered the bank about 1:30 p.m. He was dressed in painter's coveralls, a yellow cap and had white cream on his face. He was wearing pin-striped slacks under the coveralls, deputies said.

The man went to a teller window, showed the teller his gun and demanded money. He appeared nervous. When the teller was slow putting the money into a white paper bag he had given her, he became loud and demanding, witnesses told deputies.

As the man turned to leave the teller window with an undetermined amount of cash, Simpson, 1715 Dixon Blvd., Cocoa, who was standing at the next teller window, grabbed the man, said Sheriff's Agent Barry Trent.